Wharton Is Rebranding Itself Around A Single Word

Wharton isn't satisfied with how its brand is perceived, because
it thinks that all the top 20 business schools are far too
similar, reports
Melissa Korn at the Wall Street Journal. So, it's
making some changes to focus its brand around a single word.

Knowledge.

Everything will be built around the promise of
knowledge. Wharton's blog, for instance, is already
called Knowledge@Wharton. Its
new tagline is "Knowledge for ... ," which will be completed with
a variety of words like "life" and "action."

And it's trying to make the brand as appealing as possible to the
segment of students it already attracts: quants. The school's
marketing will be piled high with charts, graphs and
infographics.

"It was important that we clarify and achieve consistency for the
Wharton brand. It was a matter of finding a shared understanding
of what the brand is all about.

Words such as knowledge, analytics, rigor came up [in focus
groups]. Initially, there was no single platform that we could
identify.

One of the challenges was to look at [the websites of] the top 20
schools, take off the brand names and see if you could tell which
school was which. Even putting Wharton in there, they all look
very much alike."